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A reference architecture for satellite control systems

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Abstract

Software for satellite control systems (SCS) domain performs a relevant role in space systems, being responsible for ensuring the functioning of the satellites, from the orbit launch to the end of their lifetime. Systems in this domain are complex and are constantly evolving due to technological advancement of satellites, the significant increase in controlled satellites, and the interoperability among space organizations. However, in order to meet such complexity and such evolution, the architectures of these systems have been usually designed in an isolated way by each organization and hence may be prone to recurrent efforts and difficulties of interoperability. In parallel to this scenario, reference architecture, a special type of software architecture that aggregates knowledge of a specific domain, has performed an important role for the success in development, standardization, and evolution of systems in several domains. Nevertheless, the usage of reference architecture has not been explored in the SCS domain. Thus, this article presents a reference architecture for satellite control systems (SCS-RA). Results achieved from usage of SCS-RA in the development of a microsatellite control system for National Institute for Space Research showed a significant reduction of effort, benefits of interoperability, scalability, and sharing of ground resources.

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Notes

  1. For the sake of simplicity, henceforth, we use this acronym to express both singular and plural.

  2. For the sake of simplicity, this acronym will be used interchangeably to express singular and plural forms.

  3. Software architectures are often structured in views and viewpoints. A view is often materialized in a model and corresponds to one of facets of a software. For example, a logical view (usually represented in class diagrams in UML), or a physical view, often represented as a deployment diagram. In turn, a viewpoint corresponds to a collection of patterns, templates, and conventions for constructing one type of view [52, 53].

  4. http://www.omgsysml.org.

  5. http://www.opengroup.org.

  6. https://www.opencontainers.org.

  7. https://docs.docker.com/engine/swarm.

  8. https://grpc.io.

  9. https://www.openapis.org.

  10. http://flask.pocoo.org.

  11. https://spring.io.

  12. https://nodejs.org.

  13. http://github.com/Netflix/eureka.

  14. http://rancher.com.

  15. https://nasa.github.io/openmct.

  16. http://www.ubatubasat.com.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development - CNPq (Grant N. :300394/2017-9) and São Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP (Grant N. 2017/06195-9).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute for Space Research (INPE), São José dos Campos, Brazil

    Adair José Rohling, Mauricio Gonçalves Vieira Ferreira & Walter Abrahão Dos Santos

  2. Federal University of Technology - Paraná (UTFPR), Guarapuava, Brazil

    Adair José Rohling

  3. University of São Paulo (USP), São Carlos, Brazil

    Valdemar Vicente Graciano Neto & Elisa Yumi Nakagawa

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  1. Adair José Rohling
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  2. Valdemar Vicente Graciano Neto
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Correspondence to Adair José Rohling.

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Rohling, A.J., Neto, V.V.G., Ferreira, M.G.V. et al. A reference architecture for satellite control systems. Innovations Syst Softw Eng 15, 139–153 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11334-019-00322-w

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